Opportunity Update

Yes the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is STILL doing good science on the Martian surface since arriving at Mars on 25 January 2004 – that’s over 13 years ago! Go Oppy!

The image above is a cropped version of the original (find it here at NASA). The tracks are visible in the lower center of the image.

Here’s the NASA caption:

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity worked for 30 months on a raised segment of Endeavour Crater’s rim called “Cape Tribulation” until departing that segment in mid-April 2017, southbound toward a new destination. This view looks back at the southern end of Cape Tribulation from about two football fields’ distance away. The component images were taken by the rover’s Panoramic Camera (Pancam) on April 21, during the 4,707th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity’s mission on Mars.

Wheel tracks can be traced back to see the rover’s route as it descended and departed Cape Tribulation. For scale, the distance between the two parallel tracks is about 3.3 feet (1 meter). The rover drove from the foot of Cape Tribulation to the head of “Perseverance Valley” in seven drives totaling about one-fifth of a mile (one-third of a kilometer). An annotated map of the area is at PIA21496. (edit: link goes off site use your back button to return)

The elevation difference between the highest point visible in this scene and the rover’s location when the images were taken is about 180 feet (55 meters).

This view looks northward. It merges exposures taken through three of the Pancam’s color filters, centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). It is presented in approximately true color.